YouTube Anaconda Vomited Goat, Not Cow

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A YouTube video of an anaconda allegedly disgorging a cow became
an overnight sensation, but the unlucky animal was probably a
much less impressive goat, one expert says.

The video shows an anaconda in the Brazilian Amazon
regurgitating the intact carcass of a brown-and-white–spotted
mammal, and was originally posted under the title "Giant Anaconda
Regurgitates a Whole Cow."

The animal in the video is too small to be anything but a baby
cow, though, and is more likely a much smaller mammal — a goat,
said Frank Indiviglio, a former herpetologist with the Bronx Zoo
who currently writes at ThatReptileBlog.
Besides, anacondas can't eat an entire, full-grown cow: the
largest animal documented to have been consumed by a constrictor
is a 130-pound (59-kilogram) impala, eaten by an African rock
python in 1955.

And contrary to some early speculation, the regurgitated animal's
coloring doesn't match the brownish gray coat of the capybara, a
South American rodent that can grow up to 150 pounds (66 kg),
Indiviglio said. [ See
Video of Snake Regurgitating Goat ]

"It's absolutely not a capybara," Indiviglio told LiveScience.
"Capybaras have different legs, different color, a different
tail."

Indiscriminate eaters

Anacondas live in South America, can grow up to 20 feet (6
meters) long and may weigh up to 330 pounds (150 kg), according
to the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology. Though massive,
the anaconda has nothing on the largest snake that ever lived,
the
extinct Titanoboa cerrejonensis, a 45
foot-long (15.2 meter), 2,500 pound (1,135 kg) monster snake that
lived about 60 million years ago in modern-day Colombia.

Anacondas aren't picky eaters, strangling and
swallowing anything from piglets to other snakes, to 30-pound
river turtles, shell and all, he said.

In fact, the mammal shown in the YouTube video may actually be a
pretty humdrum meal for the monstrous snake.

"Plenty of people have seen anacondas with horns poking out of
[their] skin because they've tried to swallow deer that have
antlers," Indiviglio said.

Indiviglio has even seen an anaconda swallow a 5-foot-long Caiman
crocodile. "That took the animal all day to kill," Indiviglio
said. "They don't suffocate easily, like a mammal."

Vomiting common

The vomiting shown in the YouTube video occurs relatively
commonly, Indiviglio said. Because their big meals incapacitate
them, the snakes sometimes have to vomit in order to escape
dangers.

Once the
giant constrictors like this anaconda swallow a meal, their
internal organs shrink to make room for the huge mass of food,
and their powerful digestive enzymes spend weeks breaking down
everything but hip bones, hooves and fur.

"After a big meal, they've just got to crawl off, find a sunny
warm place and sit there for weeks," he said.

The massive effort of digesting a meal makes the snakes slow and
heavy. As a result, at the first hint of danger anacondas
regurgitate their meals in order to hide, fight or run.

In fact, the people recording the YouTube video may have prompted
the anaconda to vomit up the goat, Indiviglio speculates. The
setting shows much less-dense vegetation than is typical in the
Amazon jungle, suggesting it lies near a human settlement such as
a village.

"People might have pushed [the snake] into view for a better
film, might have dragged it by the tail," Indiviglio said. "It
probably could have kept that goat down had it not been
disturbed."